17Aug
Just received this notice from Facebook for an ad I helped SCOGA to book recently. The ad was targeted only for Singaporean audience and I specified in my profile clearly I’m from Singapore. Not sure why I received this. Anybody else did?
Hello, Nicholas Aaron Khoo,
Based on the information we have about your residence or principal place of business, your advert purchases will be made from our European Headquarters through Facebook Ireland Limited from September 2010. As a result, your purchases may be subject to Irish Value Added Tax ("VAT"), which will be automatically added to your purchases. To check or change the information that we have about your residence or principal place of business, please go to the settings page. VAT may then be charged based on the requirements applicable to your revised location.
If you are established or located in Ireland:
Because you are established or located in Ireland, your purchases will be subject to VAT. The appropriate VAT rate will be automatically added to your purchases.
If you are established or located in the EU outside of Ireland:
If you are purchasing adverts for a business purpose and your principal place of business is not in Ireland, Irish VAT will not be added to your purchasing costs provided you have supplied us with your VAT registration number (including country prefix) prior to the purchase, but you may be required to self-account for the applicable VAT in your jurisdiction of residence or establishment. For more information about the meaning of business purpose or self assessment, please see the VAT FAQ. If you are not purchasing adverts for a business purpose, Irish VAT will be automatically added to your purchases at the appropriate Irish VAT rate.
If you are established or located outside the EU:
Because you are not established within the European Union, these purchases will not be subject to VAT, but you may be required to self-account for the applicable VAT in your jurisdiction of residence or establishment.
If you have any questions, please review our VAT FAQ.
Sincerely,
The Facebook Adverts team
26Jul
Looks like the storage business is doing well, probably boosted by increasingly mobile devices the likes of iPhone, iPad, netbooks, in vehicle entertainment, etc. See below for the full announcement:
Full-Year Revenue Totals US$9.8 Billion, Up 32 Percent, Net Income of US$5.93 Per Share, Up 185 Percent
Kuala Lumpur – 26 July 2010 — Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today reported financial results for its fiscal year 2010 and fourth quarter ended July 2, 2010. For the quarter, revenue totaled US$2.4 billion, hard drive unit shipments were 49.7 million and net income was US$265 million, or US$1.13 per share. The quarterly results included US$27 million of expense related to litigation settlements. In the year-ago quarter, the company posted revenue of US$1.9 billion, shipped 40.0 million hard drives, and reported net income and earnings per share of US$196 million and US$0.86, respectively. This included US$5 million of income from the resolution of restructuring accruals and an US$18 million gain on the sale of the company’s substrate manufacturing facility in Sarawak, Malaysia.
Read more…
14Jul
This appeared in my inbox yesterday:
Dear,
”PLEASE THIS LETTER MUST REMAIN SECRET”
I am Olarn Chaipravat, former deputy prime minister during Thaksin Shinawatra regime which was ousted by a military coup on Sept 19 2006,and Martial law was imposed by the Council for Democratic Reform, now called the Council for National Security . After the Sept 19 coup, i would have called you on phone , but because the new government is taping the past goverment officials phone numbers, so it is no longer safe for me to call you, that is why i think it is safe to send you this mail. we are placed under surveillance.
However my main point of contacting you is to seek your sincere suggestion and guideline to invest in your country. And please because of my previous position in the government, i do not need to tell you of the absolute confidentiality which we both must have to observe, if we are to go into investment, or rather if you are to help me in investing in your country.
I desided to contact you now that I am very sure that all eyes are not on us as it was when the problem first began though we are still going to court but the environment is good now to handle the transaction very safely.
From the news publications attached here in respect of the goverment probes into much of the projects my ministry executed will make you to understand my position with the govenment now.
I thank you very much for taking time to go through my mail, and hope to read from your reply soon, .Thanks for your anticipated co-operation and my
regards to your family.
Good luck,and feel free to contact me on my email for now, until arrangements are made.
yours sincerely,
OLARN CHAIPRAVAT.
Please reply me for further details to (email removed by this geek)
I attach herewith my international passport. (picture after the break)
Read more…
02Jul
Came across this post by Brett: Why Developers Should Never Agree to an Earnout… which reminds me of my own sad story of an earnout deal which although was much smaller, basically had similar endings. The profit targets were not met because the guys who took over changed the business strategy not too long after taking over. Makes me wonder how many other high profile M&A deals the likes of YouTube, etc had the same problems?
19Jan
Received this in my inbox a couple of hours back:
19 January 2010
-NOTE—————————————————————–
For Chinese version, please click
http://www.hk.jal.com/cms/contents/local/jal_news_4408.html
—————————————————————–NOTE-
To all our valued customers,
This is to confirm that Japan Airlines is now Read more…
Tags: Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation of Japan, JAL, Japan Airlines
27Jul
Some of you might have read about a new investment which I just made which I couldn’t announce earlier.
I’ve finally completed the investment this month and it’s now official: I’m privileged to be able to advise and invest in the company which owns and operates Singapore’s most well-read entrepreneurship and startup site: SGEntrepreneurs.com (SGE).
SGE seeks to provide the most comprehensive coverage on Singapore’s startup and entrepreneurship scene and some of the startups featured in SGE have gone on to feature in renowned international sites like Mashable, TechCrunch, KillerStartups, folksonomy, Malaysia Entrepreneurs, etc.
You can read SGE’s announcement about this investment in their latest ’state of the site’ report as well as check out the updated team bio.
This geek is definitely looking forward to an exciting journey ahead working with the good folks at SGE and if you are a startup, an entrepreneur, or toying with the idea of starting out, do feel free to ping us and pop by often!
Tags: investment, SGE, SGEntrepreneurs
01Feb
Going to suffer from Obama’s signing of the Ledbetter Law big time. No wonder the stock markets crashed when he got elected and again when he was inaugurated. I’d (or anyone for that matter) now seriously think twice before starting a business in the United States.
Tags: fair pay act, ledbetter law, lilly ledbetter
01Feb
In a meeting of doom and gloom at the World Economic Forum in Davos, surprisingly LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman was one of the very few optimistic ones..
Tags: Davos, linkedin, optimistic, pessimistic, Reid Hoffman, World Economic Forum
29Jan
I read a Gartner report just 1-2 years back that Nortel was the market leader in Unified Communications (UC). That perception seemed to hold even as I talked to people in this industry over the past 1-2 years, although the CISCO/Microsoft UC solution set was always a very strong contender for market leadership.
For a while, I thought maybe Nortel was a company that could have a strong future in UC. Alas, Avaya took over the leadership recently and that seems to have sounded the death knell for Nortel as they file for Chapter 11. Another victim of the economic crisis? Or just the overdue death of a weak company?
Tags: avaya, chapter 11, CISCO, gartner, microsoft, nortel, uc, unified communications
07Jan
Driven by record sales at retail along with an 84 percent jump in online consumer spending; global install base lead over PlayStation 3 expands to more than 8 million units.
SINGAPORE — Jan. 7, 2009 — Despite a tough economy, the gaming industry held strong in 2008 and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system recorded the biggest year in Xbox history, with more consoles, games and online entertainment experiences sold than any previous year. It was a year in which life-to-date unit sales of Xbox 360 systems climbed to 28 million consoles worldwide — expanding the product’s lead over Sony PlayStation 3 to more than 8 million units. The Xbox LIVE community also grew to more than 17 million active members, as online consumer spending increased 84 percent from last year. Since the launch of the Xbox 360 three years ago, more than $1 billion has been spent on Xbox LIVE. This amazing growth was fuelled by the launch of the New Xbox Experience[1]; the broadest selection of hit games, TV shows, and movies available; and mass-market price points, starting at $199.
Xbox 360 is experiencing record-setting sales Read more…
Tags: announcement, biggest year, console games, gaming industry, microsoft, ps3, recession, record sales, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, xbox360
